So, the next venue of patent trolling has just been opened. Apple has patented - quite specifically - the wedge shape of the MacBook Air. Not the general design or impression, no - just the wedge shape. This is interesting, because that wedge shape? Hit prior art in 3.2 seconds: the Vaio x505 from 2004. A wedge-shaped, superthin (for its day) laptop - exactly what Apple's design patent claims the company has invented.

I can say from my own experience with Vaio laptops is that, while the specs are top notch and the visual design is usually beautiful and unique, the hardware itself is often prone to failure. From failing SODIMM slots to cooling fans that seize up, to LCD inverters that burn out in a few months (fixed when the industry in general moved to LED backlighting), to keyboards that stop responding...

Don't forget the tricks they played with their various bundleware and crapware in the install which somehow combined with drivers and made the only way to get a clean install to kill the restore of the image and then delete the files before they were installed while in safe mode. SONY is a pain to deal with. I always tell people to avoid them whenever I can.

Not to say that the hardware issues weren't problematic as well, I had a friend who had a SONY laptop fail recently (it was a gift) and it was the LCD screen IIRC, just that there were a whole wreath of problems there in the software as well. What should we expect from the company who brought us the musical rootkit?

What should we expect from the company who brought us the musical rootkit?

Not strictly the same company... some people tend to see Sony as this monolithic evil empire, but it's more a relatively loose consortium, with various divisions often almost infighting.

So, yeah, we have shitty software on their laptops or audio rootkit ...and OTOH among the best console libraries of software (also from internal studios), the very nice Sony Vegas (yeah, bought - but they could destroy it in the years since; instead, it greatly improved), or portable audio players (plus mobile phones, e-book readers & shop) which are among most open ones.